Q&A with Scot Ellis, marketing manager — Raman spectroscopy and microscopy, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc.

Thermo Fisher Scientific offers a complete line of handheld and laboratory Raman instrumentation. The company’s latest benchtop Raman product, the Thermo Scientific DXRxi Raman imaging microscope, uses image-centric software to quickly produce high-definition chemical images.

Q: What is the DXRxi Raman imaging microscope typically used for?

A: The DXRxi microscope allows rapid chemical imaging of solid dosage forms, including tablets and HME (hot melt extrusion) drugs. It provides powerful characterisation of drug materials, profiling content uniformity, calculating component concentrations, even finding and identifying contaminants or unexpected components. The system provides a rich visual display of the information and eliminates the learning curve once associated with Raman spectroscopy. The speed provided through the combination of workflow and system performance allows characterisation of batch-representative numbers of tablets in very short times.

Q: In a highly competitive market, how does the company aim to stay ahead of its competitors?

A: We work hard to understand customer problems and their impact and design products to solve them. Our instrument designs transcend measurement technology and complement how our customers have to work. For example, with the DXRxi, we went well beyond making a fast Raman imaging system and concentrated on time to results, users who may not be spectroscopists and uptime and reliability. The result is a product that provides immediate business value rather than technology that must be learned and maintained with limited productivity and high operating cost.

Q: Is there a particular pharmaceutical development challenge that Thermo Scientific Raman spectroscopy products have helped customers overcome?

A: We’ve been working with a number of customers who are developing new drug forms using polymer extrusion processes to improve bioavailability by controlling the state of the API and the polymer it’s embedded in. We’ve provided a unique solution that includes our Thermo Scientific Pharma 16 hot melt twin extruder for product and process development, our Thermo Scientific Antaris NIR analyser for continuous process monitoring and the DXRxi Raman imaging system to verify final content uniformity and dosage. This complete solution makes process development and validation robust by bringing manufacturing equipment and advanced characterisation tools together to control, optimise and verify at each step of the development and manufacturing process.

Q: Thermo Fisher is currently holding spectroscopic solutions workshops in the US, are there plans to stage workshops in Europe?

A: There are indeed. On 17 June in Copenhagen, Denmark, and 18 June in Gothenburg, Sweden, we will be holding the Imaging Solutions for Advanced Materials Characterization seminars. For anyone working in the rapidly expanding field of the development of advanced materials, these free seminars will illustrate how our new technologies can help them achieve the results they need. There will be a comprehensive programme of presentations covering the exciting developments in: Raman imaging for materials science, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, FT-IR spectroscopy for materials analysis and using electron microscopy as a powerful analytical tool for materials analysis.

Then there is the L’innovazione nella Filiera dei Polimeri per la Produzione di Packaging (Innovation in the Polymers chain for Packaging production) workshop, taking place on 20 May in Napoli, Italy. The workshop aims to collect contributions from the whole polymer chain, from manufacturers of instrumentation, companies producing plants and polymers, up to companies transforming them. The planned presentations interventions will be organised during the day, with the afternoon dedicated to hands-on sessions. (For more information on any of the seminars, please email info.spectroscopy.eu@thermofisher.com)

Q: What next for the Raman spectroscopy product family?

A: Customers can expect to see more solution-oriented products both in individual instrument design and combinations of technologies combined into workflow solutions. We have a long history of working closely with the pharma industry to understand needs and problems related to drug development, manufacturing and distribution as well as develop solutions across the drug product lifecycle. For example, our Raman products have been implemented as specific solutions in raw material verification for manufacturing, polymorph determination for patent protection at the development stage and tablet imaging for content uniformity and troubleshooting and anti-counterfeiting efforts in commercial support. We will continue to tailor our product designs and workflows as those needs evolve.